Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Never Trust a Costumed Stranger

Within the space of seventy-two hours last weekend, three
women were detained and sexually assaulted by armed strangers in
official-looking costumes. Two of those incidents occurred in Texas, the other
happened in Minnesota.

The
first attack took place on a highway near Carrollton, Texas
on Thursday, November 21. An unidentified man wearing what appeared to be a
police uniform stopped a woman, handcuffed her, and assaulted her in the back
seat of his car.

Early Sunday morning, a female student at the University of
Minnesota was sexually assaulted by a man dressed like a police officer. The
assailant, who was driving a black SUV, approached the woman and admonished her
that she shouldn’t be walking alone late at night. Beguiled by what appeared to
be the stranger’s official attire, the woman got into the vehicle. The driver
locked the doors and conveyed the victim to a remote location, where he raped
her.

Neal was arrested a few hours later, but released after
making bail. He was immediately put on paid
“administrative leave,” and allowed to keep his firearms – professional
courtesies that would not be extended to either of the other two accused
roadside rapists if they were captured.

Following the attack by the police impersonator near
Carrollton, police officials warned female drivers that if they are suspicious
of the individual pulling them over, they should call 911 and then drive to a
well-lit area before stopping.

This course of action might defeat the evil designs of a
police impersonator. However, if the suspicious stranger is a police officer, a
female driver who acts on that safety advice will probably find herself
involved in a dangerous pursuit that could lead to criminal charges – assuming that
she survives the encounter.

This is
demonstrated by the cast of Arizona resident Dibor
Roberts, who was attacked by a sheriff’s deputy during a late-night
traffic stop after she tried to find a safe and well-lit area to conduct unwanted
business with the uniformed extortionist.

The "assailant": Dibor Roberts at arraignment.

At roughly 10:45 PM on the evening of July 29, 2007, Mrs.
Roberts, a 48-year-old nurse and naturalized U.S. citizen from Senegal, was returning
from work when she noticed a car driving erratically in front of her.

After
passing the dangerous driver, Roberts noticed police lights in her rear-view
mirror. Her initial reaction was relief, since she believed the officer was
going to pull over what she suspected was an impaired motorist. Her relief
turned to puzzlement and then alarmed suspicion when she realized that she was
the target.

Just a few days earlier, Dibor and her husband had discussed
local incidents involving police impersonators. They were aware of advice given
by police agencies to people being pulled over in dangerous circumstances: Drive
carefully to a well-lit, preferably public area, and call 911 if possible to
verify that it is a police officer. That was the
official recommendation offered by the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office.
That department’s employees included Sgt. Jeff Newnum – who, ignoring another
driver who was operating his vehicle erratically at unsafe speeds, had targeted
Roberts for a revenue collection encounter on that dark July evening.

Roberts did nothing wrong. She acted in strict compliance with
the Sheriff’s official advice, slowing down and proceeding in the direction of
a well-lit area. Her behavior was not that of someone trying to flee from the
police.

Deputy Newnum, on the other hand, had already lost his
composure, informing the dispatcher that he was in pursuit of a “black driver”
who refused to stop. He pulled alongside Roberts and attempted a “pit maneuver”
to force her off the road, which did nothing to allay the innocent woman’s entirely
proper suspicions. After Roberts came to a stop, Newnum erupted from his
vehicle with a drawn gun because, he later testified, “I knew I had an angry
driver.”

Roberts,
who by this time was terrified, frantically tried to explain that she was
looking for a safe place to stop. Ignoring her desperate pleas, and no doubt
eager to exploit an opportunity to inflict property damage, Newnum took out a
baton and shattered the driver's side window, bellowing at her to "Open the f*****g door!" He then seized the terrified woman and
dragging her out of the car. As he did so, Dibor's foot came off the brake and
her car -- which was still in gear -- rolled forward over Newnum's foot.

Through her window, Dibor had repeatedly yelled "It's
too dark; I'm afraid." She was dragged from her vehicle yelling "No,
no, no, no," as Newnum threw her to the ground. Her cellphone was taken
from her and thrown away as well.

"He pulled me out and the car jerked because I had my
foot on the brakes," Dibor
explained after the incident.

The "victim": Deputy Newnum perjuring himself in court.

"She took it too far when she ran over my foot," insisted Newnum later under oath. This is a
petulant lie of the kind that comes readily to the lips of tax-eaters of Newnum’s
ilk. He had needlessly escalated the encounter by threatening to use deadly
force. Roberts made no effort to escape after supposedly assaulting Newnum.

Furthermore, Newnum’s courtroom testimony that
Roberts clearly intended to run over his foot contradicted his official report from
six months earlier, in which he said it wasn’t clear whether this was a mishap
or an act of malicious intent. He likewise equivocated on the witness stand as
to whether or not he was injured in that “attack.”

Another key contradiction in Newnum’s testimony dealt with
his concerns over Robert’s “threat” to his safety. The deputy claimed that he
was worried that he couldn’t see Roberts’s hands, which supposedly justified
his decision to approach the car with a drawn gun at the “low ready” position.
However, he also testified that when he reached Roberts’s vehicle he saw her hands
plainly, and that they were gripping her steering wheel "firmly" – which
he said justified suspicions that she might have been impaired.

In his closing arguments during the trial,
Yavapai County Prosecutor Glen Hammond insisted that the driver’s crime was
that "she did not stop" --which
would mean that Sheriff Waugh had abetted the crime by instructing motorists
uncertain of the identity of their pursuer not to stop until they reached a
well-lit area. Hammond's position was that Roberts was a criminal because
she had obeyedthe
instructions offered by the Sheriff, and that it was not necessary to
prove that she had willfully tried to flee or injure Newnum.

The jury, which apparently was populated entirely by punitive
populists, ratified that claim after less than two hours’ deliberation,
finding Roberts guilty of two felonies – resisting arrest (which
isn’t a crime) and unlawful flight.(Significantly, the initial traffic violation was dismissed outright, as
was a charge of “assaulting” Newnum for supposedly running over his foot.)
The trial judge, in what he probably thought was an act of tremendous
generosity, dismissed the first conviction and sentenced Roberts to six months'
supervised probation. This left an undeserved felony conviction on her record,
which meant an end to her nursing career.

Not content to ruin Roberts’s professional life and inflict
substantial financial and emotional hardship on this innocent woman and her
family, Hammond – offering the last full measure of prosecutorial malice –
tried to depict the terrified nurse as the bully in this encounter.

"All he [Newnum] wanted from the very beginning was an
apology and [he] left it up to the County Attorney what to do with this
case," whined Hammond. "It was a misunderstanding. It has been really
tough on him and his family due to a lot of press, a lot of hate mail. He has
been called a racist.... He just wants everyone to move forward and" – at this
point, dear reader, you may want to find a receptacle for your rebellious gorge
-- "let the healing begin."

Bobbing
in this slurry of insipid clichés is an unintended confession by Hammond that
he had committed malfeasance of office: If this incident was a
"misunderstanding," then it wasn't a crime, and shouldn't have been
prosecuted as such. In addition, if Newnum really wanted nothing more than an
apology "from the very beginning," he should have complied with
Dibor's reasonable and lawful request to find a well-lit area to conduct the
traffic stop.

An actual peace officer (who wouldn’t be involved in roadside
shake-downs in the first place) would have cleared up that “misunderstanding,”
rather than escalating it. Jeff Newnum, like practically everybody else in his
profession, is a law enforcer who impersonates a peace officer. Such people are
immeasurably more dangerous than their imitators.

What boggles my mind is how her defense could be railroaded to such a degree. Were there no attempts to paint the cop as a lying sack of offal? That being perjury then the case should have been dismissed from the beginning. The jury? What a bunch of morons! STill, I've sadly met all too many who are and they walk the street and obey their masters like the sheep they mimic.

the sociopathic class of enforcers is becoming more and more an occupation force for the power presently ensconced in various levels of govt: city, county, state, federal.

this power, as it is presently constituted and wielded, will not last forever. when the reflected power does change, i would not want to be a member of the enforcement class given the hate being built up by their actions today.

It looks like committing rape could get you charged with impersonating a police officer. Hard to tell the cops and rapists apart anymore when they both do the same thing while under the guise of being cops.

By the officer's statement stating and admitting it was all a "misunderstanding", is that not grounds for the lady to have the conviction overturned/dropped and have her record cleaned... and does she not have grounds for a counter civil libel/slander suit against the police officer?? I'd like to know if anything more comes of this ... I hope and pray justice prevails in this incident of this innocent lady!! If so, please let me know at tru2blueyes@yahoo.com ... thanks!

ALL PUBLIC DEFENDERS, AND POLICE WORK FOR THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY FOR A CONVICTION. THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN THE GREATEST COUNTRY OF THE WORLD (LAUGHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A JOKE FOLKS) THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THERE IS ONLY JUSTICE FOR THE WEALTHY.

I like your work, Mr. Grigg, but your parenthetical, that resisting arrest is not a crime, is a misleading aside. Resisting arrest, however the state defines it, is a crime, because the state says so. If a case can be made that a person resisted arrest, you can bet your bottom dollar it'll be advanced in court.Now, whether or not it is a moral wrong is another question. I think it might be a disservice to your readers to say bluntly what you feel through the misuse of a very technical term, which covers all those behaviors the state deems punishable by fine, labor, imprisonment, or death.

Other than that, thanks for reminding me again why the institution of police, and the danger of police impersonators, make the future grim.

We have always had cops like this. In the past however they confined their crimes to the lower classes; the poor, people of color, and the homeless. Middle class America ignored it and now are paying the price.

Don't know if you read about this Italian lady, who was insane enough to call the British cops (it seems unlike the Brits and Americans, Italians are not taught in school that the cops are a universal panacea (they're actually quite suspicious of their cops), which makes her calling the cops all the more insane)

She ended up sectioned (detained under the mental health act),

five months into her incarceration, on the orders of Essex council social workers, she was forcibly sedated and subjected to a cesarean section, and only informed of what had taken place after she regained conciousness.

15 months later, Essex county council is still holding the child, and won't release it.

If it is all true, this is the level of the most abusive of slave plantations, of the third reich, of the Soviets and of the fictional "one flew over the cukoo's nest"

Most alarmingly, I tried to discuss it with my ex (she's Italian) in the hope that she could get some pressure from Italy. Her attitude was that if it happened then it must have been justified, so what the hell was my problem, why was I telling her?

Here is the deal folks. My father was a police officer in the 60's and 70's. I was a police officer in the 80's and 90's. I was raised with the notion that we were there to serve the public and I believe that we did so. My dad and I took seriously the notion of protecting the public at large. While LEO's of bygone days understood that danger was part of the job. That's just the way it was and we only had verbal skills to diffuse most situations, these days, police have too many tools on their belts to the point where they would rather reach for the easy way out by macing, tasing, or outright shooting a citizen. Things which I would never have thought of way back when. The reason I believe is bacause police, like most of the citizenry are afraid. They are scared for their safety. They have bought into the government mandated mantra of 'be afraid, be very afraid'. I got out of law enforcement because I could see this being taught to the new generation of LEO's. They were being taught that EVERYONE is a threat to their safety until proven otherwise. Old style had it that everyone was innocent until proven guilty. It is not that way anymore folks, get used to it, or prepare to fight because today's law enforcers view YOU as the enemy until such time as you bow and scrape low enough and often enough to make THEM feel safe.